


Please Forget to Fall Down

by orphan_account



Category: All Time Low, Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-08 07:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been confirmed by Winston Churchill that the once great Nazi Germany has in fact somehow sped the world’s turning, causing the quicker aging and shorter days. Scientists say that what was once a day is now only 12 hours, causing the darkness and light at aforementioned intervals. A month now only lasts a day. They also advise that the population stay inside during the dark day, as it is a darkness not even affected by the great lights of Paris. </p>
<p>Time Is Running Out.</p>
<p>(Or, Alex is a genius trying to save the world)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Forget to Fall Down

**Author's Note:**

> (>^_^)>

_“It has been confirmed by Winston Churchill that the once great Nazi Germany has in fact somehow sped the world’s turning, causing the quicker aging and shorter days. Scientists say that what was once a day is now only 12 hours, causing the darkness and light at aforementioned intervals. A month now only lasts a day. They also advise that the population stay inside during the dark day, as it is a darkness not even affected by the great lights of Paris. The year is now 1953 because of the increased time.”_  Sarah Aziles covered her mouth with her hand as the radio reporter continued the horrible news and looked at the only picture of her husband. She looked around their small home, at the brown walls and few possessions, and then down to their sleeping newborn daughter, Joyce, curled in her pink metal crib. If Sarah knew one thing, it was that they had to leave for Lebanon for America. Now.

_**** _

 

* * *

 

In 1988, what was equivalent to 20 years later, Joyce Barkat has given birth to a son, Jack, who is now two days old, and lost her husband four days before that. She always knew dark days brought bad luck. In a hospital bed a floor above, Isobel Gaskarth is watching her son, Thomas, hold her boy, Alexander. When Tom gives Alex back to Isobel, she whispers that in Alex’s tiny ear that she just knows he’ll be a smart boy, the smartest. Six light days and six dark days later, it’s 1989, and Alex is a toddling one year old with tufts of blond hair sticking up in all directions.  Isobel knows that Alex will only have a short time to learn all he can, watching as Tom, now seven, looks through thick books almost as wide as his skinny frame. He’s got six light days and six dark days to learn all that is required at seven. Isobel sits with Alex and starts to teach him colours and the alphabet. It might seem impossible, but Alex is picking right up, pointing at red and then purple when Isobel asks. When she looks over, Thomas is closing the book for math and opening one on grammar. She smiles at him and he does too, before starting to work on a worksheet as Alex puts blue and yellow together, pointing at green. Isobel knows then and there that Alex will be the smartest.

In 1990, Joyce sends Jack to a private boarding school in New York, hoping he can learn enough to get by. Jack toddles around outside the train station, pulling uncomfortably at his crisp new uniform and waving his favourite toy around, a blue bunny with button eyes. Joyce picks him up and carries him to the train, ignoring the way he looks just like his father, with his dark eyes and hair. She has to remind herself constantly that this is for his own good, that she couldn’t teach him what he needed. It doesn’t convince her perfectly, but it’s enough as she watches the darkness roll by the train window. She just wants time to be back to the way her mother talked about it, where days were longer than sun and dark, and time didn’t fly by like it does. She knows, somewhere in her heart, that he’ll hold power enough to change it back someday. Jack just sleeps in the seat next to her, holding his bunny tight to his chest.

 

* * *

 

In 2002, Jack Barakat decides he’s had enough of only going home for Christmas just to be ignored by his mom, that he’s tired of all the other boys at school pushing him around with their rich daddies while Jack feigns poverty to hide his mother’s wealthy but widowed life. At fourteen he packs his possessions up, takes fifty bucks from his asshole roommate Craig (not like he’ll miss it anyway) and kisses what he couldn’t bring goodbye, before jumping out his second-floor window and running through the campus woods. He walks to the nearest bus station and gets on a greyhound bus, hood up, and falls asleep on the way to New York City, surrounded by people as poor as he is now. Fucking Craig always wanted the top bunk anyway.

 

* * *

 

In 2003, just 180 days after he was born, Alex Gaskarth graduates college at fifteen, majoring in science. Isobel is the happiest mother in the world, watching as Alex strides across the well-lit stage to accept his diploma. Outside the ceremony, Alex throws his black cap into the air, watching as it spins back down to earth. Isobel smiles and tries to fix his dirty blonde hair before giving up and letting the wind muss it up. She tells Alex repeatedly how proud she is, letting him drive home in their car. He’ll get his license soon enough. Alex has already got a job and new home, so Isobel helps him move his stuff from his room, not looking at Thomas’ old door. Time caught him too fast, and she found him twelve days ago, seemingly asleep and almost blue. Alex smiles at his mother as they set off again, leaving his father Peter to make sure nothing was left behind.

When Joyce Barakat gets an officer at her door a year later telling her that her only son has gone missing, she puts funding into Clandestine Industries, a leader in the science of time. Namely slowing it down. They thank her profusely, but she waves it off, asking if any of the scientists need a home. One does, a sixteen year old genius named Alexander Gaskarth. Joyce tries not to notice how similar their ages are, Alex and Jack. And when he gets there, she tries not to notice how their eyes and eyebrows are similar or the way Alex stomps around just like Jack did when he came home on holiday. And Alex, well, he can’t help but feel extremely common in the house that belongs to the Joyce Barakat. It’s huge, to say the least, all floored in dark wood with blood red walls in most rooms. His room, however, is a dark purple, and is already littered with band posters along the walls and clothes over the floor. It’s just like the one he has at home, he thinks, homesickness flooding through him like a tidal wave. Joyce says it can be his, if he’d like, after she gets it cleaned up. The black door has been spray-painted with white paint in capital letters, spelling out JACK. He doesn’t ask whose room it was, but he fears that Joyce is giving away her son’s room instead of blocking it off like Thomas’s. He says that he’d like the room, because Joyce looks so hopeful that he’ll take it. That night he can’t sleep, feeling like someone is watching him. He has a nightmare that Thomas is begging him to slow time down, and he can’t, he can’t save Thomas or stop time from running out for everyone. When Alex Gaskarth wakes up, he’s determined to put time back the way his mother talked of it, where days were twenty-four hours and there was no light day and dark day, but one day that contained each. Over breakfast, he tells Joyce of his wishes, and she looks so happy, glancing up at a picture on the wall behind Alex’s head.

_**** _

“I want you give me time to find him.” She says simply, walking out of the room and up the stairs. Alex turns around in his seat and finds himself eye to eye with a picture of a boy his age, who is presumably Jack. His hair is mostly brown, with a blonde bit bleached in at the top right corner of it. He’s smiling, but his eyes are black and sad. All in all, he’s distinguishably Joyce Barakat’s son. Alex can’t help but feel like he knows Jack Barakat, knows why he’s so sad. Later, Joyce confides that Jack has run away without a trace.

_**** _

In the dingy streets of New York City, Jack Barakat is spending his 17th birthday forgetting about school and learning that Rian Dawson, an orphaned boy only one year older than him, had lost one too many bets, and the bank sold his family’s house and possessions, and sent him to a orphanage. Rian tells him that his parents had died in a car crash before that, and his girlfriend Cass was left back home when Rian got shipped off. Rian shows Jack all the best places that allow homeless people in on the dark days, where it’s not safe to be outside on the streets. When he takes Rian to the grocery and uses his last five dollar bill to buy a half loaf of bakery bread and a six pack of Coca-Cola, Rian looks at Jack like he’s a saint, like he’s important. It’s the one thing Jack had missed from his mom. Once she starting realizing that Jack wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out how to slow time like she’d hoped, her interest in Jack’s studies had dropped off a cliff.

The bread and cokes last a good three days between the pair, which pulls them through the winter. On the only light day of spring, Jack and Rian are sitting on the wall outside the poor house, when a man in dark green pants and a Clan Industries logoed shirt hands them a dollar in change, smiling a little when they thank him. He walks across the street and into a Starbucks. Rian insists that they fix Jack’s blonde bit hair in the poor house’s sink, using bleach from under the cupboard to whiten it back to blonde instead of the mottled shade of brown it had become. Back out on the street and clean after a shower at the same house, Jack and Rian sit on the curb again, quickly accumulating enough money to buy food and some drinks. Rian puts it in the ragged backpack he carries, and he and Jack set off across town, mostly for want of a walk through Central Park. The vendors don’t protect their money as well as they could there.

_**** _

In the lab, Alex has been researching the cause of the time slowing, getting a tip from Joyce that Nazi Germany owned the device that caused it all. But, as he searches through newspaper archives and war journals, he can’t find one word that would even point to it being their fault.

So, in 2005, Alex kindly asks for somebody’s help. That somebody is Alex’s old professor of chronology, Patrick Stump. He’s always leaning more toward a new place for the human race to live, but Alex insists on finding the machine first. He knows it exists, if only he can find it. Patrick just agrees to disagree and then insists Alex stop by the Starbucks down the block, saying their coffee’s the best in New York. Later, as Alex is walking the block down to where his Civic is parked he runs into a boy his age. Sorry doesn’t slip off his tongue when he realizes it’s Jack Barakat. Alex blinks slowly at the boy and grabs his wrist. Jack fights back, tugging harshly on his own hand, blinking at Alex like he wants to say something but can’t.

_**** _

“Come with me.” he begs, tugging lightly in the direction of his car. Jack shakes his head, yanking on his hand again “Jack,” Alex pleads, turning and loosening his grip on Jack’s wrist. The other boy is still  “My name is Alex Gaskarth, and I work for Clandestine Industries. Your mother misses you, she’s been asking me to slow time so she can find you, please.” Jack shakes his head, slipping his wrist out of Alex’s hold.

_**** _

“If I’m your motivation, then I’m staying here. Fix time, Alex Gaskarth, and I’ll find you - and mom - again.” Jack says softly, voice hoarse, before shaking his head dizzily and stumbling off. Alex can’t help but remember how Jack’s voice sounded, or how thin his wrist was. More confused than ever, Alex goes home. He doesn’t tell Joyce about Jack, mainly because of Jack’s words ringing in his head. Later, he finds papers on a formerly noble German family, the Russelburgs, building a large machine. Alex is sure it’s the machine that slows time.

For the first time in his life, Alex sees it rain with the sun out. Joyce just worries her lip and says it means bad luck.  

_**** _

When Alex returns to the lab, he finds all of his things strewn everywhere, papers ripped and glass shattered, and Patrick unconscious in the midst. Alex runs to get help, and they say they’ll tell the CEO. Alex doesn’t even really know who that is.  Alex is called down to the Starbucks two blocks away that Patrick had told him about for a meeting. He’s a little more than surprised to find Patrick’s boyfriend, Pete, in a suit, pulling uncomfortably at the tie, with Patrick standing next to him, drinking coffee. Alex just kind of blinks at Pete and then at Patrick.

_**** _

“Is this why you wanted me to get coffee here?” Alex asks, stupidly. Pete laughs, finally comfortable.

_**** _

“It’s the most discreet way to evaluate employees. If you’re not nice and polite to some Starbucks barista, who says you’d be kind to a customer?” He explains. Alex decides that Pete Wentz is a genius. “Anyways, I’m really just here to tell you to keep the planning under wraps, Alex. Whoever shattered your work will come back. So I want you, Joyce, and anyone else who knows about your plans to come in hiding with me and Patrick, so no one can disturb it again. This is a big breakthrough, Alex, you could be the one to finally slow time. I want you to be ready by twelve days from now.” Alex’s mouth has fallen open, but he closes it and nods, numbly. Twelve days to find Jack, who has yet to leave his mind. Alex goes back to where he’d first found Jack, and only finds the other boy with the backpack.

_**** _

“Where’s Jack?” Alex asks, and he notices the boy has been crying. “What’s happened, where is he?”

_**** _

“He’s sick.” The boy manages to get out. “They say he’ll die if I can’t find money for a hospital.” Alex curses. “He’s over at St. Brigid’s, if you can help.” Alex takes off, catching a taxi a block down the street and breathlessly commanding that he get to St. Brigid’s immediately, watching the skyline roll by too slowly for his tastes. When the driver tells Alex his total of $23, he just throws three ten dollar bills over the seat gets out, going through the main entrance and up to the help desk.

_**** _

“Jack Barakat?” Alex tries, and the blonde lady types it in and shakes her head. Alex swears under his breath. “Ok, where do you put the sick and poor? My friend Jack’s dying and he can’t afford treatment.” Alex snips, getting frustrated fast. He never should've let Jack go. The woman sighs and points down the hall, snapping her gum as she talks, just as snippy with Alex as he was with her.

_**** _

“If he’s the homeless boy with the brown hair, he’s in that waiting room over there.” Alex thanks her and tries not to run down the hall. In the waiting room, Jack’s sat in a corner, coughing and wheezing, deathly pale and sweating. Alex walks over and hands the older nurse, whose nametag reads Aziles, behind the counter his Clan ID and credit card, telling her that he can pay for Jack to be treated. Her mouth falls open when she sees he’s a top scientist at only seventeen. She waves for younger nurse to get Jack to a room and treated, and she does, helping Jack up and past a door. The old woman looks at Alex, considering something.

_**** _

“Save us, Alexander. Time is a problem humanity has created for ourselves, and I know you can slow it down for us all.” She says, voice thin and worn from age. Alex nods, promising to try. She smiles, and Alex’s heart breaks a little, knowing she knows how much time she should’ve had with her family, and that he couldn’t stop it from happening in the first place. He suddenly wishes he could save Thomas in some kind of time machine. It’s only been about 27 days since Thomas died, but Alex has grown about three inches since then and had to get a haircut twice unless he wanted it to touch his shoulders. Thomas barely had 170 days on Earth, and Alex is determined to see five times as many, maybe more. But, no one lives past eighty hardly at all anymore.

_**** _

A nurse interrupts Alex’s thinking, saying Jack is going to be asleep for about ten more minutes and when he wakes up he’ll be just fine. Alex smiles and thanks her, following her back to the room where Jack and about ten other patients lay in rows on hospital beds. Alex watches the dark day set in and sighs. He and Jack will have to stay over the day. Suddenly, a dying man with a medical mask is quietly escorted to the door, saying thank you to the guards softly before walking out into the night. Alex watches, horrified,  as three more sickly patients do the same, hospital staff watching calmly as four patients throw away their lives. Dark days are when murderers and wild animals flourish, using the pitch black to their advantage to kill anything and everything foolish enough to go outside. Scooting closer to Jack, he asks the nurse what the patients are doing. She sighs sadly and says that the patients who can’t afford more treatment would rather die free outside than in a hospital bed. Beside Alex, Jack starts to wake up, turning his head from the bright lights overhead and accidently tugging on his IV. Alex swats his other hand, waking him up without ripping his IV out.

_**** _

“Alex Gaskarth.” Jack manages to rasp out, sounding exactly like someone who had been sick for a long time. “Did you fix it?” Alex shakes his head and Jack looks disappointed in him.

_**** _

“But I’m almost there!” Alex says earnestly, hushedly telling Jack what he’s found. Jack listens carefully with wide eyes, immediately agreeing to hide with Alex. Alex promises he’ll get Rian on the first bus back home with money in his pocket, so he can see Cass again and finally be happy.

_**** _

In 2008, Alex Gaskarth packs up everything he owns and goes to Clandestine Underground, a secret lab and living space that Pete had set up, taking Jack, Pete, and Patrick with him. Joyce Barakat stays above, not knowing that her son is found, and continues to fund Clandestine, thinking Alex had moved onto Color Theory. Meanwhile, Alex pinpoints the location of the machine to be under the Russelburg’s old manor, somewhere in the hills of Germany. Its processor has been updated, from what Patrick’s findings tell him, to run quicker. Pete bites his lip and sets up a missile strike through the United Nations, who send drones to examine the area. No one lives nearby, no towns or even villages for miles. The strike is approved for February of 2010. Jack begs Alex to let him go outside the entire time he’s setting up maps and reading books or throwing said books against the wall in frustration.

_**** _

“Alex,” He whines, pouting while Alex is reading about the effects of chronological pathology (or, what is happening to the world as time flies quicker) on people. “Can’t I go outside? Just five seconds of my head out the window, I swear.” Alex is used to it though, and explains for the millionth time that Jack’s too important, that the Russelburgs were known worldwide for their efficiency in stealth. That night, Alex wakes up from another nightmare to the window open and Jack’s bed empty. Alex crawls through it, finding tire tracks and one of Jack’s shoes in the driveway. Alex picks it up and curses, hitting the panic button that Pete excitedly installed, making their fortress a little more convincing. Sirens blare and the lights blink red, but Alex just sits down on Jack’s bed and stares at the pillow where Jack’s head should lay.

In 2010, just days before the missile strike is set to go off, Jack Barakat is reported officially kidnapped. Alex goes insane, demanding that Pete or -fuck, god forbid- the government get involved, Jack’s innocent, Jack’s been kidnapped. Jack’s gone. Pete insists that they’re doing all they can, calling off the strike until Jack is found. A day later, Pete gets an email with an attached picture of Jack with a black eye and blood pouring from his nose. The email reads: Fangt uns, wenn ihr könnt. Catch us, if you can. Alex screams and throws things and tears at his hair until Patrick calms him down with the fact that they sent it from Germany, from the Russelburg home. The military moves in, catching the Russelburgs as they’re about to move out. Jack is nowhere to be found.

When questioned, they all smirk and say that Jack’s somewhere “safe”. The military search the place but find no trace of Jack or the machine. Alex curses and gets on a private flight out there. When Alex searches the basement, he finds KMc on the floor written in blood. Alex shouts and hears footsteps run closer as he lifts up on the floor, finding a trap door. Crawling under, Alex suddenly hears a loud buzz, and when he turns his head, he almost cries in happiness. It’s the machine making that noise and tied to it, passed out, is Jack. Alex runs over, listening as the military rip the door off its hinges, clamoring down to the cellar where Alex is fiddling with the knots on Jack’s wrists. Jack’s got a split lip to compliment the black eye and bruise on his jaw. His nose has been fixed, but there’s blood dried across his face. Alex seethes and lets an official cut Jack out of the binds, clearing the area and calling on the strike again. On the flight home, Alex cradles Jack’s head in his lap, watching as suddenly the clouds slow down, the sun stops its usually quick journey across the sky at noon and everyone on the plane cheers loud enough to wake Jack up. He looks pitiful, a bandage over a cut on his jaw and his eyes bruised. He looks out the window and gasps, noticing the change. He looks at Alex, closely, before kissing him, smiling.

_**** _

“I knew you could do it Alex.” He whispers, resting his cheek against Alex’s and squeezing his hand. Alex smiles wide and watches as everyone cries, calls their loved ones and then some. The pilot lands in Washington DC to be met by the president. Jack is given a medal for bravery,

(“A fucking medal for getting kidnapped,” Jack laughs, letting Alex look at it.) Alex and Patrick are given the Nobel Prize right then and there, and Pete just laughs and says that Decaydance is definitely selling a shirt for this. The picture of Jack and Alex kissing, medals in hand, on the cover of every magazine and newspaper.

* * *

 

_**** _

_“This new era begins with an announcement that I’ve been dying to hear for years. Time has slowed. We are now back to a twenty four hour day; dark and light are one again. A year is three hundred sixty five days. Alexander Gaskarth, Jack Barakat, Patrick Stump, and Peter Wentz are national heroes. They are engineers, scientists, brothers, lovers,and sons. I commemorate this day to be a worldwide holiday of remembrance of all those who have died before their time.”_ A commotion from behind the microphone.

_“I’m naming it Northern Downpour Day!”_ Alex calls, laughing gleefully. The president laughs.

_“A national holiday,”_ He continues, _“To remember what these brilliant young men have done for their country and humanity. As Mr. Gaskarth has declared, this holiday will be named Northern Downpour Day.”_ Sarah Aziles smiles and closes her eyes, heart monitor going flat. Joyce Barakat covers her mouth and sobs, listening closely as her son adds:

_**** _

_“The day the moon forgot to fall down!”_ She smiles and whispers to the ceiling that she knew it. Jack held the power to change it after all.

 

* * *

 

Isobel smiles as her baby boy jumps in and names his holiday after Thomas’ favourite song.

_**** _

Alex saved them after all. She walks into Thomas’ room for the first time since he died and looks again at the last typographic drawing he’d hung up on his wall.

_**** _

_“If all our life is but a dream, fantastic posing greed. Than we should feed our jewelry to the sea. For diamonds do appear to be just like broken glass to me. And then she said she can’t believe genius only comes along in storms of fabled foreign tongues. Tripping eyes and flooded lungs, Northern Downpour sends its love. **Hey moon please forget to fall down, Hey moon don’t you go down.”**_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you are confused about the whole concept, I'm sorryyyy gah but title goes to Panic! At The Disco and concept goes to me after staring at a clock too long


End file.
